Issues with your account? Bug us in the Discord!
Ubuntu the other white meat
Stingray
Elite Ranger
in Zocalo v2.0
I finally took the plunge and boy did I get soaked. I'm running Ubuntu 7.0.4 on my "old" Dell laptop in dual-boot. While I can't make a complete switch from XP at this time, I'm going to reduce its use to the absolute minimum. Some software packages I use and a few games I have still require that I keep it for the time being.
The story so far: I finally got fed up with this ship wreck of an OS that they call Windows XP. Enough is enough. You can't surf the web without getting caught with your pants down (pun intended). There's no browser that's immune to malicious code when the code is running off a compromised server. No link you are getting from friends in an email is safe and no forum is safe either.
I went and installed Spybot: Search & Destroy 1.4 on my infected laptop just to see if it would detect anything and lo and behold it found zip, nada, nothing. Just great. And I'm fairly certain I've been infected by the same malware in the span of 6 (six) weeks and the people who are supposed to be our first line of defense against this kind of threat didn't know about it.
And of course Symantec Anti-Virus got once again caught sleeping on the job. Well, I doubt any other AV software would have fared much better, since I'm always running an up-to-date patched-up OS, and yet you don't stand a chance against those mofos out there who have nothing better to do.
I'm not saying that Linux is the solution, but at least I may be less exposed than I would be running Windows.
I'm not holding my breath for Vista... it's running fine, but I doubt it's more secure.
The story so far: I finally got fed up with this ship wreck of an OS that they call Windows XP. Enough is enough. You can't surf the web without getting caught with your pants down (pun intended). There's no browser that's immune to malicious code when the code is running off a compromised server. No link you are getting from friends in an email is safe and no forum is safe either.
I went and installed Spybot: Search & Destroy 1.4 on my infected laptop just to see if it would detect anything and lo and behold it found zip, nada, nothing. Just great. And I'm fairly certain I've been infected by the same malware in the span of 6 (six) weeks and the people who are supposed to be our first line of defense against this kind of threat didn't know about it.
And of course Symantec Anti-Virus got once again caught sleeping on the job. Well, I doubt any other AV software would have fared much better, since I'm always running an up-to-date patched-up OS, and yet you don't stand a chance against those mofos out there who have nothing better to do.
I'm not saying that Linux is the solution, but at least I may be less exposed than I would be running Windows.
I'm not holding my breath for Vista... it's running fine, but I doubt it's more secure.
Comments
Spybot = good, so long as it's updated.
Norton...NORTON dood? That rotting POS software couldn't find it's way out of a wet paper bag, let alone a virus! Get AntiVIR! ([url]www.freeav.com[/url])
XP is not that bad at this point really.
But good onya for Ubuntu. :)
Avoid Vista like the plauge though.
If hackers have as much trouble writing malicious code as most people have using Linux, then we might actually have a chance. :D
One thing I dislike about Linux is that everything you want to do feels like doing homework. But once you do know what to do, it's actually not that bad. I always use the car metaphor, you need to be a mechanic to drive Linux, there is no easy way around it. It's a lot like maths.
Another thing I hate about Linux is that once you open a console, it's like someone dropped you off in the matrix. I mean, you are somewhere on some drive, some partition, some directory of some user and if you need to find some file in some directory on some other drive of some specific partition you are completely lost. And everything is case sensitive and you need to have the proper rights to do stuff to it and I can see why spammers get impatient dealing with such an OS. :D In a way this is the reason why a GUI is more efficient. Imagine someone wanting to use Linux who can't type with all his fingers? I can, and I'm still a bit bothered by the sheer madness involved trying to navigate inside those catacombs.
I also learned something last night, don't try to install Ubuntu on your laptop while it's docked and connected to an external monitor, it won't recognize your display and you'll end up with low-rez display settings. If you try to fix this you might as well start over with your installation to save time. Yes, I know about xorg.conf and it doesn't help.... and I tried compiling the NVIDIA driver and everything worked (even got the compiler installed and stuff), except the driver ended up being not compatible after all. And what is great about that is that there's no easy way to undo stuff like this unless you know exactly what you are doing.
Truth be told, I have yet to use an OS that doesn't suck on one level or another.
Oh, and I was giggling like a little girl when i actually managed to get my (USB) printer to work under Linux.... how pathetic is that? I couldn't do that under DEBIAN. I feel like I returned back in time... well if that's what it takes to surf somewhat safely, then that's what I'm going to do.
That's the way it is with anything though, isn't it? I mean, take a complete computer newbie and put him in front of a windows machine and tell him to do some basic tasks like copying files, browsing the net or changing a system setting, and he won't know what to do either. Show him, and let him do it a couple of times by himself and soon enough it'll be second nature.
It's just that most people know how to do stuff in windows, and because they don't know how to do it in linux, linux becomes inherently complicated.
[QUOTE=Stingray]Another thing I hate about Linux is that once you open a console, it's like someone dropped you off in the matrix. I mean, you are somewhere on some drive, some partition, some directory of some user and if you need to find some file in some directory on some other drive of some specific partition you are completely lost. And everything is case sensitive and you need to have the proper rights to do stuff to it and I can see why spammers get impatient dealing with such an OS.[/QUOTE]
I think you should hate your inexperience rather than linux itself. You are completely lost only when you don't know what you're doing. Of course you can't just know how to do everything if you haven't learned it. I don't know much about Solaris and I'm pretty much lost in that OS if you just dump me into a shell too, but it'd be illogical for me to hate Solaris for that reason.
Once (if) you learn how to do things from the terminal, I'd be willing to bet that you'd prefer doing a lot of things from there rather than using a GUI. And you'll figure out why a case sensitive file system and file permissions make for a much better system. I prefer a terminal to do most things in linux, simply because the terminal commands are so powerful.
Risky, as in surfing the web? I used to think that of Anti-Virus software, that if you don't download any potentially infected files (executable files) from the web or your email or click on some dubious link, you wouldn't even need to install one of those, but guess what, this hasn't been true for years. You can get viruses and worms by just leaving your browser running (Internet Explorer) or by previewing your mail (in Outlook). That's why more and more people have been switching to alternative browsers and mail clients. But even those seem to be targeted and not as safe as advertised. The XP firewall is a bad joke because it's useless once you have third-party software installed that may open up doors and then all kinds of things can get through. ZoneAlarm is way too restrictive, you might as well physically unplug your connection from the web or disable your network adapter. While Vista isn't as safe as they say, it's probably moving in the right direction by copying some concepts from the linux world.
[QUOTE=Melkor;162697]Ubuntu's nice. Personally though, I rather like Mint. (linuxmint.com)[/QUOTE] Never heard of that, might have to check that out. I'm still a bit puzzled by the lack of true NTFS support, it's not like the file system is new, it's been with us since WIndows NT, I think. Must be some legal thing.
[QUOTE=CurZ;162700]I think you should hate your inexperience rather than linux itself. You are completely lost only when you don't know what you're doing. Of course you can't just know how to do everything if you haven't learned it. I don't know much about Solaris and I'm pretty much lost in that OS if you just dump me into a shell too, but it'd be illogical for me to hate Solaris for that reason.[/QUOTE]
The problem I have is that while all OS distributions do essentially the same things, they are doing it in different ways. And just like knowing how to drive a car won't teach you how to drive a bicycle or a semi-truck, neither OS prepares you for using the other.
Right now I'm forcing myself to use Linux, because it might we worth the trouble in the long run. :D
I can't remember if the issue with NTFS being read/written to in Linux is a licensing thing or what but recently, possibly due to the new inter-cooperation between MS and Linux devs, that's started to change. It's a little better and you can actually write to NTFS drives by default on a lot of linux incarnations now, but it's still not quite as smooth as I'd prefer it to be.
I actually tried this winter, and there was one thing we needed that i couldnt get to work in Ubuntu, can't remember what it was though, also might have been that we can't get Ubuntu to fit on a 6.4 gig HD like we can with Mandriva.
XP is not that bad at this point really.[/QUOTE]
I agree. As long as you keep it up to date, it works pretty well. I haven't had any crashes (at least, OS related) for a long time.
That'd be Remote Linux, a very simple and easy method of maintaining a large number of identical installs of Linux.
All of the GE CT and MRI machines built before 2004 run on a Silicon Graphics Octane Workstation (with those awesome RISC Processors), and use the SG version of uunix called Irix. Everything post 2004 runs on a HP Workstation and runs Red Hat. And I dual boot with Ubuntu.
Once you understand the basics, linux really isn't that hard. I rather enjoy it really.
actually this wouldnt be a bad way of updating my clients, however it still wouldnt solve the problem of getting ubuntu onto a 6.4 gig drive.
unless i'm misunderstanding whats being said.
XP got fried, and my Vista dies. Oh where, oh where can you be!
if i remember right, i couldnt get Ubuntu in at under 7 or 8 gigs, which, whil enot bad, doesn't fit on the 40 6.4 gig drives i have, and even though 10 gig drives are cheap, buying 40 of them at once is pricey
unless i'm misunderstanding whats being said.[/QUOTE]
No, it won't.
And I was thinking about a thin client actually.
One thing though, OpenOffice is a joke... I mean seriously, it's not even in the same ballpark than MS Office. I hate Word, but the OpenOffice's word processor is just brain-dead.
Spybot = good, so long as it's updated.
Norton...NORTON dood? That rotting POS software couldn't find it's way out of a wet paper bag, let alone a virus! Get AntiVIR! ([url]www.freeav.com[/url])
[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the tips! My computer is running wonderfully since I got rid of Norton and replaced it with AntiVIR.